Montreal-based FinTech startup Mylo today announced their acquisition of Tactex Asset Management. The acquisition is particularly interesting because it marks an important shift in FinTech: where financial services incumbents have typically acquired emerging FinTechs, Mylo has done the opposite to accelerate its mission of financial inclusion.

Mylo is a mobile platform that automatically rounds up every purches users make and invests the spare change. Co-created by Ferst Capital Partners, who also recently invested another $750,000 as part of Mylo’s $1.25 million pre-seed financing, Mylo uses its proprietary user transactional data and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide personalized insights and recommendations so that the users can make better financial decisions.

The acquisition of Tactex Asset Management, which currently has $110 million in assets under management, will allow Mylo to create, launch and manage its own investment funds, save on operational costs, and communicate with its customers under one brand. It will also position Mylo as the only automated investing service in Canada that provides users with a unique portfolio for each specific goal, profesionally managed by a licensed portfolio manager.

“We actually started working with Tactex about a year ago,” Philip Barrar, Founder and CEO of Mylo told MTLinTECH. “As a startup we obviously want to be able to get to market quickly, team up with industry experts, and they’re obviously a world class team. So we started working with them to develop a solution, and at one point they became so integral in what we’re doing and they loved our social mission of what we’re trying to achieve that it seemed to be a natural fit, and we’re happy to have them as part of the team now.”

The acquisition marks a shift in the FinTech sector, with a startup doing the acquiring.

“The roles have been reversed. Typically you see banks or large incumbents acquiring FinTech startups. It’s very rare to see a startup acquiring an established brand that’s been around six or seven years with a hundred million in assets. It’s really quite unique to see this happening.”

Tactex Asset Management was created in 2011 and is a registered Portfolio Manager (PM), Investment Fund Manager (IFM) and Exempt Market Dealer (EMD). With over $110M in assets under management, and having processed over $1B in exempt market transactions, Tactex is well-established in the financial services industry. The firm is currently registered in Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, British Columbia, and Alberta.

“Our team is excited to join Mylo at the forefront of financial services innovation,”said Tactex CEO Liam Cheung. “We teamed up with Mylo because we agreed fully with their social mission to enable people to achieve their financial goals, and designed a solution to provide an extremely low cost infrastructure for Mylo clients in a fully regulated firm with the capability to offer a large menu of fully advised services.”